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I thought the canon explanation was that HAL wasn't "insane", per se, but that he had been given conflicting orders (keep the Jupiter monolith secret, but also

I thought the canon explanation was that HAL wasn't "insane", per se, but that he had been given conflicting orders (keep the Jupiter monolith secret, but also assist the crew in every way) and was resolving them as best he could.

LoSboccacc 10y ago
yeah the novel goes and "solve" the misery. with the task of saving the mission, not lying to the humans and withheld information about the alien, the only logical step to resolve the constraint when the human ask about the mission nature is to kill them to prevent having to lie or having to divulge information. this also echoes many Asimov novel in principle and especially one in specific where the ai goes trough all rules and the only non conflicting way to solve the constraint was self destruct (cant remember the title)
- wruza 10y ago
  Even macos autolayout subsystem (cassowary solver) can break constraints based on priority as part of regular operation. It is a linear/logical problem, strange that scifi robots fail in it. Probably scifi authors are not aware of non-strict problems. No-lie should have minimal priority possible, otherwise HAL breaking TLoR is only a matter of time.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    This has to be the most intellectually sound, and technically sophisticated analysis that still has, "Well then of course there wouldn't be a movie to watch," as it's answer.
  - alanh 10y ago
    Haha. Anyone who has written more than a dozen lines of CSS is hopefully also familiar with the computer ignoring one directive in favor of the other. Try this: .foo { display: inline; float: right; } Better believe foo won't be inline! That’s per spec :)
  - mannigfaltig 10y ago
    Maybe a programmer accidentally added another zero to the priority value for keeping the secret (say, 100 instead of 10). Hard constraints are the limiting case of soft constraints.
    - wruza 10y ago
      Or, to be sure, he put -1 into priority field and published in hurry into production. He didn't know that the value was cast to unsigned long in the view controller. Still happens in the future, I guess.
- qu4z-2 10y ago
  Are you thinking of Liar![0]? Looking it up on the Wikipedia, the See Also section includes a reference to HAL. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar!_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar!_(short_story)
phkahler 10y ago
Hal was in a double bind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind And given that this is a now obsolete explanation for schizophrenia it makes perfect sense that they'd use it in a movie back then. I can also attest to being caught in one and that it can be enormously stressful - they are also more difficult if you are prone to all-or-nothing or black and white thinking, so again the traditional notion of computer logic would be more prone to it.
twoodfin 10y ago
There is no "canon" explanation for the film, since Kubrick did not provide one, and 2001 was, at heart, his movie, independent in significant respects from Clarke's novelization and later sequels. That being said, I think the onscreen evidence for Clarke's version is compelling. Most notably, it solves the mystery highlighted by the article as to why HAL didn't kill Bowman on the first EVA: If the computer could have engineered a plausibly innocent loss of contact with Mission Control, he could have acted freely to preserve both the astronauts' ignorance and the success of the mission without worry of being contradicted by the ground-based twin computer (which he surely knew would eventually diverge from his decision-making, having not been informed about the Monolith). Once the astronauts were told of the divergence and took it seriously enough for their discussion in the pod, HAL had no remaining options.
- munin 10y ago
  I recently re-read 2001 and there was a forward by Clarke that explained something I hadn't known before - the screenplay and the book were developed simultaneously, in a joint collaboration between Kubrick and Clarke. Kubrick wanted Clarke to come up with an epic space story and put it on the screen, but didn't want to burden Clarke with having to write a screenplay. So I don't think you can really call the book a "novelization" because both worked on it.
- SilasX 10y ago
  >There is no "canon" explanation for the film, since Kubrick did not provide one, and 2001 was, at heart, his movie, independent in significant respects from Clarke's novelization and later sequels. If you reject the canonicity of Clarke's novel, then everything after the "Jupiter and beyond..." card is nonsensical. What is the viewer supposed to think about the space baby that's actually grounded in something within the movie? (Edit: Ditto for the aging sequence. I know that you can fit the events into the "alien zoo" framing, but since the film doesn't direct us to that explanation, and if the novel doesn't count, it can't be any more than a fan theory.) Incidentally, that's why I think the film went sharply downhill after that card.
  - nerdponx 10y ago

LoSboccacc 10y ago

yeah the novel goes and "solve" the misery. with the task of saving the mission, not lying to the humans and withheld information about the alien, the only logical step to resolve the constraint when the human ask about the mission nature is to kill them to prevent having to lie or having to divulge information. this also echoes many Asimov novel in principle and especially one in specific where the ai goes trough all rules and the only non conflicting way to solve the constraint was self destruct (cant remember the title)

wruza 10y ago
Even macos autolayout subsystem (cassowary solver) can break constraints based on priority as part of regular operation. It is a linear/logical problem, strange that scifi robots fail in it. Probably scifi authors are not aware of non-strict problems. No-lie should have minimal priority possible, otherwise HAL breaking TLoR is only a matter of time.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  This has to be the most intellectually sound, and technically sophisticated analysis that still has, "Well then of course there wouldn't be a movie to watch," as it's answer.
- alanh 10y ago
  Haha. Anyone who has written more than a dozen lines of CSS is hopefully also familiar with the computer ignoring one directive in favor of the other. Try this: .foo { display: inline; float: right; } Better believe foo won't be inline! That’s per spec :)
- mannigfaltig 10y ago
  Maybe a programmer accidentally added another zero to the priority value for keeping the secret (say, 100 instead of 10). Hard constraints are the limiting case of soft constraints.
  - wruza 10y ago
    Or, to be sure, he put -1 into priority field and published in hurry into production. He didn't know that the value was cast to unsigned long in the view controller. Still happens in the future, I guess.
qu4z-2 10y ago
Are you thinking of Liar![0]? Looking it up on the Wikipedia, the See Also section includes a reference to HAL. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar!_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar!_(short_story)

phkahler 10y ago

Hal was in a double bind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind And given that this is a now obsolete explanation for schizophrenia it makes perfect sense that they'd use it in a movie back then. I can also attest to being caught in one and that it can be enormously stressful - they are also more difficult if you are prone to all-or-nothing or black and white thinking, so again the traditional notion of computer logic would be more prone to it.

twoodfin 10y ago

There is no "canon" explanation for the film, since Kubrick did not provide one, and 2001 was, at heart, his movie, independent in significant respects from Clarke's novelization and later sequels. That being said, I think the onscreen evidence for Clarke's version is compelling. Most notably, it solves the mystery highlighted by the article as to why HAL didn't kill Bowman on the first EVA: If the computer could have engineered a plausibly innocent loss of contact with Mission Control, he could have acted freely to preserve both the astronauts' ignorance and the success of the mission without worry of being contradicted by the ground-based twin computer (which he surely knew would eventually diverge from his decision-making, having not been informed about the Monolith). Once the astronauts were told of the divergence and took it seriously enough for their discussion in the pod, HAL had no remaining options.

munin 10y ago
I recently re-read 2001 and there was a forward by Clarke that explained something I hadn't known before - the screenplay and the book were developed simultaneously, in a joint collaboration between Kubrick and Clarke. Kubrick wanted Clarke to come up with an epic space story and put it on the screen, but didn't want to burden Clarke with having to write a screenplay. So I don't think you can really call the book a "novelization" because both worked on it.
SilasX 10y ago
>There is no "canon" explanation for the film, since Kubrick did not provide one, and 2001 was, at heart, his movie, independent in significant respects from Clarke's novelization and later sequels. If you reject the canonicity of Clarke's novel, then everything after the "Jupiter and beyond..." card is nonsensical. What is the viewer supposed to think about the space baby that's actually grounded in something within the movie? (Edit: Ditto for the aging sequence. I know that you can fit the events into the "alien zoo" framing, but since the film doesn't direct us to that explanation, and if the novel doesn't count, it can't be any more than a fan theory.) Incidentally, that's why I think the film went sharply downhill after that card.
- nerdponx 10y ago